


Home Sweet Home

by Mizmak



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: First Kiss, Happy Ending, Love Confessions, M/M, Miscommunication, Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:27:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26914384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mizmak/pseuds/Mizmak
Summary: What Aziraphale said was... I’ve grown tired of the city, and would like to move to a cottage in the countryside.What Crowley heard was... I want to move away from London without you.It was just a slight misunderstanding.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 20
Kudos: 166





	Home Sweet Home

**Author's Note:**

> Russian translation available at: https://ficbook.net/readfic/9981706  
> (A big THANK YOU to duplii for this!!)

The trouble started a week after they saved the world. They had eaten lunch out again—they had been doing that every day—and were taking a little post-prandial stroll through St. James’s Park when Aziraphale paused at the duck pond. “I understand the ducks prefer cracked corn to bread,” he said. He raised his eyebrows at Crowley in his patented pleading expression.

“Right.” Crowley snapped a packet of cracked corn into existence, and handed it over. 

Aziraphale beamed at him. “Thank you.” 

They leaned against the railing, and Aziraphale tossed the food to the appreciative ducks. Crowley watched him, ever so pleased at how much his dearest friend enjoyed such simple pleasures. He stood there, basking in the warmth of a late summer afternoon, with blue skies and a light breeze, with trees starting to turn colors—golden orange and crisp reds—and with an angel by his side. Everything was utterly perfect. 

Until Aziraphale spoke again. 

“You know,” he said, “I think it would be ever so delightful to have a duck pond of one’s very own, don’t you?”

Crowley frowned. _What?_ “Something wrong with this one?”

“Oh no, certainly not. I merely think that a country pond would be even better. One could acquire those domestic ducks—the white ones—so there would be fresh eggs every morning for breakfast.”

Domestic ducks? Fresh eggs? Crowley felt a wave of confusion wash over him. “ _What_ are you going on about, Angel?”

“I am talking about a country pond,” Aziraphale replied with a slight hint of tetchiness. “Do pay attention. I have been considering what to do, now that Heaven has no further use for me, and what I should like is to live in a country cottage, near a quaint village—away from this noisy, busy city.”

Now Crowley felt alarmed. Aziraphale wanted to _leave London?_ “But Angel—your _bookshop_ is here.” 

Crowley stayed at the bookshop most of the time now, day after day, ever since escaping the End Times, and he had planned to ask if he could just move in there, because he wanted to be with Aziraphale as much as he possibly could. And now his best friend wanted to abandon it?

“Well, the bookshop was meant to serve as a base of operations, so to speak, for my angelic duties here. Heaven was quite pleased when I suggested the idea, though I rather doubt they knew how much I simply wanted a place to store my collection. Now that Heaven is out of the picture, I don’t need to run it as a shop, do I?”

“But…but it’s more than that. You _live_ there.” _And I want to live there._

“That’s precisely the point I was trying to make. I don’t have to live there anymore.” Aziraphale tossed out the last of the corn. He crumpled the bag and walked down the pathway a few feet to throw it in a trash bin. “Are you coming? Perhaps we could share a bottle of wine?”

“Yeah, I’m coming.” _Don’t you dare go anywhere without me_. 

_A country cottage?_ Crowley caught up with Aziraphale, and as they strolled towards the bookshop, he couldn’t help but wonder if all the plans he’d had for being with his best friend were about to come crashing down.

*

A light rain pattered against the windowpanes of the bookshop.

Crowley lounged on the sofa, with Aziraphale in his customary armchair. A couple of hours had passed, and evening had fallen. They were working their way through their fourth bottle of wine.

“London is a _great_ city.” He ignored the sound of the rain. So what if it got a bit damp here at times? Crowley waved a hand about, as if to encompass the whole metropolis in one gesture. “What was it that human bloke said…something about not liking it…if you didn’t like this city, you may as well pack it in…hm?” His brain felt decidedly muzzy.

“Samuel—” Aziraphale hiccupped. “—Johnson. _When a man is tired of—_ hiccup— _London, he’s tired of life.”_

“Yup. That’s the one.” Silly idea, leaving this wonderful place. He wouldn’t stand for any such talk. “History. Everywhere you look.” _Their_ history, too, all round them everywhere they went. “Art. You like museums and stuff. Theatre…lots and lots of plays to see yet. Music—your classical music.” Not that he cared about going to the symphony, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to get Aziraphale to focus on the things he would miss terribly. “ _Restaurants_. You can’t get five-star meals in Upper Ruddy Twitting-on-Twee, right?”

“Cooking is a thing, you know.” Aziraphale reached for the wine bottle, and refilled his glass. “I shall learn how to _hiccup_ cook.” He took a drink, spilling a little wine down his chin. “Oh, drat.” He wiped it off with the back of his hand, then seemed to realize what he’d done. “Dear me. So uncouth. So _untidy_ of me.” 

As Aziraphale searched through his pockets until he produced a handkerchief, Crowley stifled a laugh. “Give it up, Angel. You do know cooking is messy, right? You don’t like being messy.” His friend was a prim and proper angel. He tried to imagine Aziraphale standing at a kitchen worktop, broken eggshells everywhere, bowls with batter dripping over the rim, flour in his hair. He grinned. “You won’t like it _at all_. Better stay put. Here. Forever.” _With me_.

Aziraphale snorted in a completely undignified, non-prim or proper manner. “Been drinking. That’s all.” He wiped his chin with the handkerchief, and set it gently on the desk. “I have no intention of cooking while inebate…inabria… _hic_ …while drunk.”

“Yeah, well, still messy.” Crowley took back the bottle and tried to refill his own glass, but the bottle was empty. Oh, well, there were more where that came from. “And that’s another thing.” He grabbed an unopened bottle and got to work on it. “ _Alcohol_. Bet you won’t find a good wine shop in Lower Bumpkin-on-Diddly-Squat.” 

Aziraphale unsuccessfully tried to stifle a belch. “Don’t be ridiculous. Wine shops _here_. Can stock up when I visit. Not a problem.”

“Faugh.” How did he think he’d come to London for visits and stock up on wine when he didn’t even drive? Idiot. “Stay here. Much easier.”

“Don’t want to.” Aziraphale shook his head. “ _Listen_ to that.” He gestured towards the window.

Crowley looked through the window, at the hurrying scurrying throng of humans on the pavement, and the nonstop stream of cars on the street. He heard shouts, and honking horns, and screeching brakes. He shrugged. “Get earplugs.”

“It is _quiet_ in the countryside.”

“Not with all those ducks quacking away.”

“Well, I would rather listen to ducks than honking car horns. I don’t see why you should object so sternous…so strenally…so _strongly_ , my dear.”

“Don’t you go ‘my dearing’ me.” Why couldn’t the fool whom he loved with all his heart _understand?_ “It’s not _home_.” Not without his Angel. Crowley waved the wine bottle around to encompass the bookshop. “ _This_ is home.”

Aziraphale seemed to sink lower in his chair, and his eyelids drooped. “Books can be moved.” He sipped at his glass. “It’s a lovely building, I must say, but it’s the books that make it special, you know.”

_Bugger the books_. It was the Angel who made it special. “I’m not helping you move the damn books.” He sank further down into the sofa, suddenly feeling far too tired. Maybe if he went to sleep, he would wake up to find this had all been a bad dream, the whole day, the whole absurd country cottage nonsense. That would be ever so nice, if it just went away….

“Well, really.” Aziraphale leaned forward to point an unsteady finger his way. “If you can’t be helpful, then do please cease talking about it. I am _most_ disappointed in your attitude.” Then he leaned back with a huge sigh. “Go to sleep, my dear.”

“That’s what I’m trying to do.” Crowley set his wine glass down and snuggled down. _My dear_. He closed his eyes, and drifted off, in his favorite place in the world, with an ache in his heart at the thought of seeing it empty, and his Angel somewhere else, without him by his side.

*

Crowley woke on the sofa at some unholy hour long before dawn, and found Aziraphale had actually nodded off for once, still in his armchair. He miracled his hangover away, and then he carried his friend up the stairs to the small flat above the bookshop. He lay Aziraphale on the four-poster bed there, and used another snap of his fingers to change out his old-fashioned clothes for a pair of blue satin pyjamas. He pulled the top cover over a sleeping angel, and he gazed upon him with the greatest fondness. “Don’t leave me here in this city alone,” he said. “I only just got you all to myself, after all these centuries. I want to stay close to you.”

He bent over the bed to touch Aziraphale’s head. He looked so peaceful, so free from the anxieties that had haunted him for such a long, long time. Crowley leaned down and whispered in his ear. “I love you, Aziraphale. Don’t ever go away.”

Then he left the bookshop, and returned to his flat, where he looked round at its stark walls and heartless rooms, and he went to his bed and he laid his head down on the pillow, and he cried.

*

Autumn rolled in the next day, ahead of schedule, blustery and rainy and with a chill in the air. 

They went to lunch together, the same as every day. They ate quietly, barely talking. When they left the restaurant, Crowley looked up at the sky, where gray clouds scudded past. The rain had let up, at least. “Are we taking a walk in the park?” It wasn’t far.

“Let’s go to the gardens.” Aziraphale headed off. 

Crowley strolled beside him as they entered St. James’s Park. They walked towards the Palace, where the Memorial Gardens stood. The park was not as crowded as usual today, and they found a quiet space to look upon the beds filled with brilliant yellow and red flowers. The wind blew the flowers sideways, and petals flew up now and then, scattered away in the breeze.

“This is such a beautiful place,” Aziraphale said, “even when the weather is not at its finest.”

“Yeah, it’s all right.” Crowley did admire the flowers. He liked his houseplants, and he liked gardens. 

“You know, it would be wonderful to have a real garden of one’s own. I should very much like to have a spot to grow flowers and vegetables and herbs and even perhaps a pear tree or two.”

A chill ran up Crowley’s spine, and it didn’t come from the autumnal weather. “The bookshop has a flat roof. You could put one up there.”

“Oh no, I should think not. Too much pollution, too little sunlight. What’s needed is a proper piece of land in the country.” He coughed a little cough which Crowley instantly recognized as his _Do Please Pay Attention_ alert. “What is needed is the cottage we’ve been talking about. A place where plants can thrive.”

Crowley shivered. “ _I_ haven’t been talking about it. _You_ have.” He did so wish Aziraphale would give up the notion of leaving London. He didn’t know how much more of this he could take.

“Yes, I have been talking about it,” Aziraphale said sharply. “Because it’s _important!_ I have been thinking and speaking about a future life that could be so much more than this endless round of meals and drinks and going to the same spots over and over.”

“ _I_ don’t have a problem with it.” Crowley felt like stepping over to the nearest flower bed and ripping a few geraniums into shreds. They had spent _millennia_ meeting on the sly, barely able to get in a short chat or a quick drink, and here they were, finally free to be together, and Aziraphale was intent on throwing it to the winds. He wanted a million meals and a million drinks and he’d go to the same damn park a million times if his best friend walked there with him. 

Aziraphale turned to face him, moving closer. “I only wanted to try it out. Is that such a crime? Just a trial, to see if it will suit. Imagine it—no traffic, no smog, no one in a hurry, perhaps a pleasant lane to walk from the cottage to the town, a little bit of a touch of Eden—”

Crowley lost it at that. Even in Eden, they had been together. How dare the angel compare his idyllic getaway to the place they had met, when now he proposed to run off. “Enough!”

Aziraphale’s brow puckered. “Crowley? What’s wrong? Can’t you see the place in your mind, how perfect it is—"

“For God’s—for Somebody’s—oh, Hell, for _my_ sake,” Crowley shouted, “will you please stop going on about your blasted cottage with its precious pond and its delightful garden and its bloody quaint village? I _hate_ it!”

“Hate? Oh, dear.” Aziraphale’s lower lip jutted out, he frowned deeply, and lowered his head. He sniffed a little, and said, “If that’s what you think….”

Crowley instantly felt abashed by Aziraphale’s crushed expression. “Look, I’m sorry, but it’s just not _right_.”

“I did so want it, though…are you _sure?”_

His regret at making his friend feel badly fled in the face of his fear at being abandoned here. “Of course I’m sure! I hate the idea of you leaving London. I can’t stand thinking of you out there in the ruddy countryside all by yourself, even if it’s only an hour or two drive away. I don’t want you to go! _This_ is your home—because it’s _my_ home, and if I’m not where you are then it’s nothing more than a noisy, busy city without a heart and I’d hate it and I’d be lonely and I won’t _let_ you go, damn it!”

Then Crowley couldn’t stand it any longer. He snatched off his sunglasses, grabbed Aziraphale, and pulled him into an embrace, nuzzling the soft curls of his friend’s hair.

“Oh…” Aziraphale didn’t pull away. “Oh, my dear—” 

Crowley sniffled, feeling tears welling up, lost for words.

“You love me,” Aziraphale said softly. It was not a question.

Crowley brushed his fingers through the angel’s curls. “I do.”

A hand cupped his chin as his friend turned his face forward enough to place a light kiss on Crowley’s forehead. “I have loved all the world.” He kissed Crowley’s cheek. “And I have loved all the world’s creatures.” He touched Crowley’s lips with his fingertips. “But I did not know what this deepest of all emotions truly felt like until I fell in love with my dearest friend.”

“You didn’t?” Crowley stepped back to stare at him in wonder. “But…but…why are you leaving then?”

Aziraphale sighed. “You utter idiot. Did I not ever mention that I meant you to come _with_ me?”

“Er…uh…I…ngk.” Crowley’s world shifted in an instant, from being utterly bereft to feeling completely whole. “You didn’t.”

Aziraphale shook his head. “Why in the world would I go anywhere without you? What were you _thinking?”_

“I wasn’t.” One simple word would have kept him from this agony of doubt. If just once Aziraphale had said _we_ instead of _I_ …then again, he could have _asked_. He grinned. “I love your bloody stupid blasted idiotic cottage.”

“Ah. We seem to have been on different pages this past day or so. I do apologize for not being clearer.” Aziraphale smiled.

“Apology accepted.” Crowley pulled him close again. “I’m sorry, too. Jumped to the wrong conclusion there. Should have known better.” Friends for six thousand years didn’t just up and go their separate ways. “Caught me by surprise, that’s all. Didn’t know what _you_ were thinking.”

“I was thinking of respite, my dear. I thought you might also want to live in peace for a while.”

Suddenly London seemed chaotic and smelly and crowded. Though periodic visits to stock up on wine wouldn’t come amiss. “Yeah, I do like the sound of that. But please don’t get rid of the bookshop, Angel. We can stay there whenever we visit. It’s—it means a lot to me.” The bookshop was where they had always gone to hide from the world.

“I shall keep it, then. Though I don’t believe it will ever be open to the public again. It will be our private haven here.”

“Good.” Such a weight had lifted from Crowley that he felt he could soar, he felt so free and so light. “Aziraphale…” 

“Hm? Yes?”

“May I kiss you?”

His best friend nodded. “You may.”

Crowley kissed Aziraphale, and as their lips touched, as the warmth of an angel’s caress flowed through him, Crowley’s soul took flight, into the wind, into the clouds, into the sky…and the soul of an angel soared there with him. The Earth was simply too small to hold their love. 

When he came down from those metaphorical heights, Crowley pulled back and gazed into Aziraphale’s beautiful eyes and said, “I love you.”

“Yes.” Aziraphale touched his lips. “I heard you, last night.” 

“Oh. Thought you were asleep.”

“I was. I heard it in a dream. The best one I’ve ever had. And I love you, too, and I always shall.”

The rain chose that moment to return, sprinkling onto their heads, running down their faces, dampening their hair. Crowley didn’t care. He was loved by an angel. “I’ve changed my mind.”

Aziraphale raised his eyebrows. “About what?”

“I’ll help you move your books after all.”

“Oh, really?” The smile his friend positively beamed upon him made Crowley nearly discorporate on the spot. 

“Yeah, really. Let’s look for that cottage of yours. Of _ours_.” 

Aziraphale glanced skyward. “Indeed, though let’s do so on a sunnier day.” He pressed a hand against Crowley’s shirt. “You are soaked through, my dear. I do believe there is a quaint old bookshop not too far from here where you might dry off.”

“I think I know the place. It’s a place which I happen to love, just like all the places you’ve ever been.” Crowley smiled, and he leaned in to kiss Aziraphale again, raindrops cascading over them still, and when they stopped kissing, he licked the water off his angel’s lips. 

He couldn’t tell, when Aziraphale closed his eyes, when he bit his lower lip and knitted his brow, whether he was fighting back tears, because tears would only vanish into the rain running down his face. 

Aziraphale opened his eyes, and he nodded, his expression now softened. “I will not ever leave you, my dear.” He slid his arm through Crowley’s. “Shall we go home?”

They walked arm in arm through the park, and along the rainy streets of Soho, and they walked inside a bookshop to get warm and dry, and when they were comfortably settled on the sofa side by side, Crowley asked Aziraphale something he’d been thinking about for some time. 

“Angel.”

“Hm?”

“When we get our new cottage, can you learn how to cook crepes?”

“Crepes?”

“Yeah. We can have them for breakfast, with some eggs from our ducks.”

Aziraphale snuggled up against him. “Yes.” He wrapped an arm around Crowley’s waist. “I shall learn to make crepes.”

“With flour in your hair.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Crowley wrapped his arms around him. “It’s just a little vision I had.” Aziraphale in their kitchen, standing at the worktop, with broken eggshells littering the surface, and batter dripping over the bowl’s edge, and flour everywhere…and later, helping Aziraphale get clean again with a long, lingering shower in their delightful new bathroom in their charming new cottage in Upper-Sweet-Upon-Twee.

And it was quite the most wonderful thing he could ever imagine.


End file.
